Efficient Multi-maneuver Platooning Framework for Autonomous Vehicles on Multi-lane Highways

Recently, autopilot-like vehicles have become more pervasive. To maintain inter-vehicle distance stably, Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is then proposed to make each autonomous vehicle exchange its dynamic state with neighboring vehicles via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. However, longitudinal platooning via CACC systems alone is not enough to improve traffic throughput since each vehicle has its own desired speed and only considers itself to optimize its traveling. Therefore, we develop a novel framework MANA to determine the suitable platoon-merge maneuver, lane-change maneuver, and space-reserve maneuver. Extensive simulation results manifest that MANA can avoid collisions effectively, converge fast, and save fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 24% and 20%.